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Soon after Staten Island joined New York City in 1898, ferry service between St. George and Whitehall was transferred to the city Department of Docks and Ferries on October 25th 1905 and five new ferries -- one named for each of the five boroughs -- were commissioned.

This was one of those five ferries, the one named for the borough of Queens.

Entered service October, 1905 between Whitehall Street in Manhattan and Saint George in Staten Island as part of a transition to city-owned ferry operations. Part of a five-boat commission awarded to Maryland Steel Company -- each named for a borough of the recently expanded city -- Queens was designed by the New York naval architects Millard & Maclean. The steel-hulled boat was powered by a pair of 2-cylinder steam engines driving a four-bladed, eleven-foot propeller at each end. Conveying up to 3,000 passengers across the harbor in as little as twenty minutes, Queens and the other members of the commission featured seating capacity variously reported from 1,800 to 1,900. Early practice offered women a passenger cabin of their own on the main deck, uncontaminated by the noxious fumes of their tobacco-burning brothers, sons, fathers, husbands. Seeing regular service until superseded by a new class of craft in the late 1930s, Queens was scrapped in 1947. Queens, Brooklyn, Bronx (without the "The") and Manhattan were built at Maryland Steel's Sparrow Point yard. Richmond was subbed out and built by locals at Burlee Dry Dock in Staten Island. The "D/D" on the smokestacks told all who beheld her that Queens was run by the Department of Docks... (and Ferries).

Shorpy.com | History in HD is a vintage photo blog featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1950s. The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago.